CITY councillors have expressed their growing concern over electric bicycles and scooters.

At a health and environment committee, members were told that a petition by Extinction Rebellion Winchester influenced the latest Movement Strategy proposals.

But Cllr Frank Pearson said he was largely concerned about one of the petition's points.

The group had asked that one lane of traffic on the district's narrowest pavements should be for pedestrians and cyclists.

Cllr Pearson said: "Putting pedestrians and cyclists together can be dangerous – the trouble is speed, and this should be in bold print.

"All of a sudden we also have the trouble of electric scooters which must be included in this consideration."

Cllr David McLean agreed with this.

"Both electric bikes and electric scooters are very quick and very quiet," he said. "The real problem is when they come up behind you."

Hampshire County Council, under the guidance of central Government, is currently working on programme to help reduce the danger of electric scooters.

The county council is responsible for Winchester's roads.

This was explained by Cllr Martin Tod, who explained: "There will be good separate facilities."

Cllr Mike Reed disagreed with this.

He said: "There are more and more facilities that expect pedestrians and cyclists to share the same space.

"This is being across the county in an attempt to get cyclists of the road itself."

As previously reported, the petition by Extinction Rebellion Winchester was referred to the committee at a full council meeting earlier this year.

It asked the council to: restrict the use of inner-city car parks like Middlebrook, Colebrook and The Brooks to blue badge holders and residents; prioritise public transport, blue badge holders, residents and emergency vehicles on city centre roads; pedestrianise areas where there is a high density of people; and rethink key routes into the city centre, re-allocating space to pedestrians and cyclists.